The Extra Spice Needed for your Salsa Dance Prowess!

When you head into a Salsa lesson, you should always try and spend some time working on your footwork. There is nothing worse than learning amazing arm-locks and then not having some proper footwork coming with it.

Do not be mistaken, learning footwork does not only help when you let go of your partner and start a shine, it also gives you an innate flair during the turn patterns, it allows you to come out of the standard set of steps and show something different, a personal flavor. 

Now, most of us at this point have probably learned a pattern or two, but this article wants to put on the spotlight one pattern in particular. Take a second, try to remember one of your first Salsa lessons, when your teacher headed to the front and after going over the basic steps, showed you your first pattern. Many patterns are unnamed, made up by your teacher just for the purpose of that class, but if you could NAME ONE…which one comes to mind? My closest guess would be…the Suzie-Q.

You will find it spelled in many different ways, but it always sounds the same in every language, so let us just stick to this spelling for the purpose of this article. The first time someone hears the name of this step, they put on a puzzled face, and start wondering, “Why is it called this way?” Or furthermore, “WHO was Suzie-Q? Was it the person who came up with this step? Or was it in honor of some famous Salsera from the past?”

I started researching thoroughly and came up with some answers to these questions, and the truth seems to send us further back, beyond the Salsa realm. We all know Salsa tends to borrow steps and patterns from other dances, mixes them, reinvents them, and makes them their own. Well, that is pretty much what happened with the Suzie Q. Apparently, this pattern was part of a novelty dance in the 1930’s that had a burst in popularity with the 1936 hit song Doin' the Suzie-Q by Lil Hardin Armstrong. The legend says the song was written in honor of Susie Jane Quealy, a notorious beauty who spent many nights dancing at the Mark Hopkins and Fairmont hotels in San Francisco, U.S.A

The Suzie-Q was immediately acquired by the Big Apple and Lindy Hop dances, and it was later borrowed by others like the Charleston and our beloved Salsa. Nonetheless, even if we bear in mind the fact that we borrowed that step from someone else…we pretty much made it our own. This step is so open to change, so flexible, countless versions have come out of its original. It allows the dancer to have their own version of the step, and just like I stated before, it lets you add your personal flavor. It is probably the first step that comes to mind when you break into a shine, so just use whatever they taught you in class about it as a base, and start building on it, change it, add this over here and take this over there, and OWN the Suzie-Q.

Here’s an excellent example of the amount of variations you can fit into the Suzie-Q. Use it as a guideline, and then try to make your own version, and remember… never underestimate the power of the Suzie-Q!

The Dutch Shines expert Paul Baarn, world famous for his 'Shines Kit", demonstrates variating the Suzy Q.

About the author

Abel Hernandez is an emerging talent from the island of Gran Canaria, Canary Islands, Spain. He has attended some of the most important congresses in Europe and is now working hard to find a place on those stages. His latest project involves a revolutionary dance company formed by some of the greatest dancers on the island. Abel is listed on Facebook under “Abel Hernandez”, which should be easy to find.